Love Child

Love Child

You ceased to think along the lines of human age a long time ago. For the one who flees the bondages of limited existence the measures of mortality lose their significance, and now, human years are a matter of relative importance to you - only where she is concerned.

Like an anthropologist studying the subjects of some primitive culture, you handle the decisive points of human life - birth, mating, death - where one already contains the soon fulfillment of the next.

You never knew about your beginnings. The absence of your mother was like a cold, black wind on your back. At age ten you already were fed up with asking yourself why every day you spent on this earth felt like exile. A letter fell into your hands, and the exile ended.

There's blood between us, love, my love,

There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;

And blood's a bar I cannot pass.

I choose the stairs that mount above,

Stair after golden skyward stair,

To city and to sea of glass.

My lily feet are soiled with mud

With scarlet mud which tells a tale

Of hope that was, of guilt that was,

Of love that shall not yet avail

No one ever said Slytherin was an easy house. Only the best.

The people in the orphanage shunned you for your wizard blood. Now it seems you're not good enough for the wizarding world either, because you're muggle-born. Slytherin is a microcosm in the wider world of Hogwarts with its very own unwritten laws and rules that the newest mudblood addition has yet to figure out.

You receive your first lesson the morning after the night of your arrival which you spent lying open-eyed in your bed in the dungeons, staring into the greenish dark: at breakfast, a girl sits down next to you. And explains. As far back as you can remember, no one has ever been that focused on you before (and not raging against you). It is a strange, somewhat frightening feeling to be the object of that concentration, and you don't know what to make of it.

Her mouth talks, as do her hands and her eyes - an amazing colouring under heavy, long-lashed lids, blue, grey and green with tiny amber coronas around the pupils, hardly ever visible, except when she raises her eyebrows. As she does when she closes her speech: "Elladora Seeley. Ella," she adds. You say your name. In all your time together at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you'll never hear anyone call her Ella. It takes you years to figure out the meaning of this.

You watch her leaving - thick, shiny golden hair swinging around her shoulders, her black school robes moving elegantly with her as she walks - and that very moment you are convinced that what you've just encountered justifies everything in this world your mind tells you to rage against. You've seen the ideal. The result of centuries and centuries of breeding, keeping the bloodlines pure, refining the features, the attributes, the mentality - until finally someone like her sees the light of the world.

You take her advice. An orphaned mudblood needs alliances to survive the snake pit. And after the first lessons it's not so hard to convince some Slytherins of your worth. Alphard Black (energy bundle and all the while up to no good). Alexander Snape (encyclopaedic knowledge of magic and a tongue like a razor blade). And Tristan Malfoy (Quidditch star and heir to an empire of connections and economics as well).

You choose them for an underlying reason you're not aware of: Every one of them embodies a part of the perfection that is Elladora Seeley. For their part they know an exception to the rule when they see one. Before the end of the year, however, you learn that you are not as mud-blooded as you were led to believe.

Elladora is the first one you tell, the first one to hear your real name. At sixteen, you've already gotten used to your heritage. You've finally found what was waiting for you, hidden in the depths of the castle all along, and for a short, sweet, glorious time, it's been all yours.

You never talked to her much after that episode at breakfast in first year. She used to be more of a year mate than a friend, until she became your fellow Slytherin prefect, and things changed a bit. And now - you'll be damned if you know why you chose her of all people to confide in - with her undivided and almost frighteningly complete attention focused on you, and her strangely understanding eyes sparkling into yours, you comprehend for the first time that she doesn't want to be your friend, either. She wants something else.

With the Chamber closed again, you become restless at Hogwarts. Now, there are only books, grades and power games left. Testing your abilities as a leader during the war against Grindelwald. Playing hide and seek with Dumbledore. All the time in the world to 'get yourself a girl' as they say. If Elladora had any sense of the worth of her own blood, she'd understand you.

Seventeen. You can almost read Elladora's mind. Why her? An inflexible, halfblood Gryffindor with neither extraordinary talents nor extraordinary beauty. With Elladora Seeley around, who would choose Minerva McGonagall? Only you. And you just happen to love the idea of Dumbledore tearing his hair out at the thought of you corrupting his stern, upright favourite student. You have nothing to lose since his mistrust robbed you of the Chamber. At eighteen, little is left of what you have come to call home.

The evening before your final depart, you and Elladora wander the path from Hogsmeade up to the castle, for the very last time. Her hand is on your arm, and you talk about the Arts, as you often have. She tells you she's leaving for Yugoslavia. The Mastery of the Dark Arts has been abolished in Britain since the end of the 19th century, but Elladora won't settle for Transfiguration or Potions or anything else she's good at. It has to be the Arts for her or nothing at all.

She grabs your hand and puts her own against it, like she's comparing the lengths of your fingers. You hold still, as if participating in some scientific experiment. You have all the time in the world, to learn her features, her expression of concentration by heart and take them with you to the continent. Eventually, she lets go of your hand, pulls her robes, tighter around her and heads for the castle entrance without looking back.

On the train, you hear about Elladora's engagement to Alphard's elder brother, Orion Black. He'll wait for her to return from the Balkans which could take years, as no one knows how long the study of the Dark Arts will last. He's at platform 9 ¾; you see him hug his finacée, and you turn away so Elladora won't catch you staring.

At nightfall, you step onto the threshold of your father's house in Little Hangleton, Yorkshire, and morning meets you on a ship crossing the Channel already.

I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take

From aching brows the aureole crown -

His locks writhed like a cloven snake -

He left his throne to grovel down

And lick the dust of Seraph's feet:

For what is knowledge duly weighed?

Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet.

Your way back leads you over a starlit sea. The March is cold in that year, as you experience standing on the deck rail massaging your tensed shoulders. On the Saturday when the wedding is fixed, it actually starts snowing. The feast is set inside but the garden with its water lily pond is the first place you go to before heading to the dining hall. Alphard used to bring you and the others here when you were still students at Hogwarts.

"Tom!"

"Ella!" Appalled by the variety of emotions in your voice, you let yourself be taken by both hands in front of a crowd staring curiously. Fourteen years. She looks at you, shaking her head slightly, and for a second you feel like falling to your knees and begging for her forgiveness, though you can't say why. The moment passes. The others take you away from her, and you feel nothing anymore except amazement at encountering so many familiar faces. Tristan. Alexander. You remember Olive Hornby, the bride, from Hogwarts. And Cepheus Black, of course, the middle brother.

The day goes by in a haze of talk and laughter and alcohol. You sit there among them, finding it hard to believe that coming back was so easy. Elladora catches your smile from across the room. You nod towards the door. Side by side you wander the cloister surrounding the small garden at 12 Grimmauld Place by late afternoon. Elladora tells you about Yugoslavia, you tell her about Iran and India, the land of the snake charmers.

"Say something in Urdu."

"Say something in Serbian."

You end up in her study room - muffled voices and music sound through the old walls - and she shows you what she's working on. The Development of the Unforgivable Curses. You feel yourself relaxing, diving into her writing style, which is familiar to you from your Hogwarts days. Cool and scientific, just the way the Ministry won't allow the Unforgivables, or Dark Magic in general, to be handled. It does not hide her fascination, her obsession.

"They'll have your head for this," you say with quiet amusement.

"Mine?" she mocks, her eyebrows raised, the tiny amber sparkles visible, and leans into you. This is a mistake, you think, as some part of you responds without hesitating, and you can't claim the passive role as your lips touch hers for the first time. You can't remember, ever having touched any part of her body other than her hands. Still, with her hands all over your body, and yours all over hers, you start to believe that you're really finally home. This is so very wrong. And you bend her over her marital bed and drown your hands in the heavy, golden floods of her hair.

Just as you never knew what drove your mother to allow herself to be defiled by that muggle who left you nothing but his name, you'll never know what possessed Elladora Seeley (the pureblooded, the smart, the talented, the beautiful), wife of Orion Black, to receive a half-blood's child and contaminate her daughter's existence. But you know, even if you cannot understand that Elladora wanted this child desperately. If she loves someone she'll love them till the end of time, and her feelings for you require a pledge that she can direct them to. This child is as much as she'll ever have of you.

You never could make up your mind about people who put the weight of their unrequited love upon a small child. And yet, it's all your fault, because Elladora knew well what she was doing, and you didn't even think of the possibility. You were not careful enough, and perhaps the tears in Elladora's eyes would have distracted you anyway, you'll never know. She needn't have told you afterwards, knowing you would not approve, to put it mildly. You didn't want her. You thought no child deserved to have Tom Riddle as a grandfather. But Elladora looked at you with those eyes, and you felt your resistance crumbling.

You ordered murder at sixteen and committed murder at eighteen. Three times you spoke the words that evening in summer 1945, three times the green light blinded your eyes. There was no barrier whatsoever preventing you from killing your elders, and they became the first of many to die at your hands. So much death and even more death, and yet you cannot hurt her. Because deep down you know you've wronged her by rejecting her, and you're in her debt. Or maybe you cannot hurt your daughter. Maybe you cannot spill Salazar's blood.

You sinned with me a pleasant sin:

Repent with me, for I repent.

Woe's me the lore I must unlearn!

Woe's me the easy way we went,

So rugged when I would return!

How long until my sleep begin,

How long shall stretch these nights and days?

Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays;

She laves her soul with tedious tears:

How long must stretch these years and years?

Without having achieved anything, you leave, knowing you will always regret your weakness. You go abroad again, letting Elladora fight her own battles with the Ministry, as you know she can. In late autumn, you read about her trial in some Hungarian newspaper, snorting over the ignorant comments of British Ministry officials on the philosophic inadequacy of Elladora's arguments. You knit your brows at Dumbledore's presence at the hearing, flinching at the reporter's outrage that a pregnant woman is dragged to court.

Elladora's speech defending her thesis is printed verbatim. For months afterwards, there isn't another subject among Dark wizards all over the continent. Elladora Black is a great scholar of the Dark Arts and a shining light of the Hidden Sciences, and Orion Black can consider himself lucky. In short, it is agreed on what you knew from first glance: she is the ideal. And you had almost destroyed it, at her own wish, too - but it didn't happen.

Thirty-four. Seldom you allow your thoughts to wander towards the little girl that grows up as Orion Black's youngest. The moments when you slip appear as tiny diamonds on a blanket of black velvet. Like stars in the midnight sky. You hear her name for the first time and feel your mouth twitch. You wonder, if Orion thought up this one himself, or if, more likely, Elladora has her hand in this.

Bellatrix Black. Bela, however, is the Serbian word for white. Just like Elladora to imply a game with words no one in the family understands but her. To everybody else, her little one will be the Amazon Star. Quite a fine name for a bastard child who might have inherited her biological father's temper.

More, you think, tell me...and discipline your mind again, putting the strange yearning to rest. But in the end, the curiosity gets the better of you - and this is only the beginning for the both of you.

Thirty-seven, you're home, and this time for good. You are the greatest sorcerer in the world, and still you have to creep into Orion Black's house in his absence, like an ordinary illegitimate father, to watch your child sleeping. They fled the city, the Wizengamot and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and settled down in Black Manor in Sussex. They lead a calm life, Orion managing the family estate and Elladora pursuing her private studies of the Dark Arts as determinedly as ever. She does not even look surprised when you're standing in the door one winter evening in 1964 with cold, white hands and the snow in your hair.

The little girls - eleven, eight and five years old - each have their own bedroom. And like everything else in the Manor, the room Elladora leads you to is lavishly furnitured - not exactly appropriate for a child. Oddly, the small body in the four-poster bed won't be crushed under the dark, morbid pureblood luxury. You can tell from the way she lies on her side under the blankets - her legs stretched, her fine features relaxed - that she's completely accustomed, and that she feels completely safe. Cheek resting on her hands, which are joined as in prayer, her shoulders rise and fall in a slow steady rhythm. Her mouth - perfect with the full, fine-shaped, raspberry-coloured lips - stands slightly open; long, soft, black lashes touch her high cheekbones.

Her mother calls her Bella. She is.

Elladora told you about the snake as well. "So you wanted to put it to the test," you say, smiling bitterly at the muggle expression which falls from your lips. Yes, she is so unmistakably yours; she even has the gift. But her affinity for word games could easily be from both her parents. Nagini she named the snake - a reference to the Naga as her mother told her everything about India, of course.

Here is a source of your daughter's life more reliable than any other, yet you shy away from the opportunity. Nagini's clever. She can understand what is the connection between you and her little mistress - snakes sense these things. You impress upon her the need for secrecy, you command her not to lose a word to Bella about your visits, which seldom occur more often than twice a year. And Nagini obeys.

Your daughter grows older, and sneaking into her bedroom becomes more and more difficult. One time, she finally sees you: stepping on the corridor where Elladora awaits you, you turn around one last time - and the gaze of sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, foreign in a child-like porcelain face, sends a fiery wave through your body.

Thirty-nine, you encounter a boggart in the Fading Rose in Knockturn Alley, and suddenly there stands a pale, dark-haired little girl in a nightsdress, half-closed eyes dreamily blinking at you. So she likes bare feet in bed, is all you can think.

Forty-three, you receive a letter from her mother, a message that consists of only two phrases: Yew and phoenix feather. You feel like smiling, watching the thin parchment burst into flames between your fingers.

She ends up in Slytherin, which truly doesn't surprise you. Elladora sometimes gives you the letters to read she writes home. You feel her eyes on you when you wander the cloister of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, absorbed by your daughter's in the beginning still childlike language. You're very foreign to her spirit at first, entering a completely unknown world - the mind and soul of a teenage witch. But time flies by, and you get to know your daughter - the things she loves (foam baths, books, chocolate cherries, her mother - clearly - and the Hogwarts Dueling Club) as well as the things she hates (wool socks, brussel sprouts, getting up early in winter and having detention with her cousin, who is "a bloody pain," as she puts it).

Elladora knows even more than what stands in the letters. "She wants to become a healer."

"Really?"

With a shrug, "She doesn't know that I know."

Forty-five, Orion Black dies an early death. Elladora and the girls return to London and join the rest of the family at Grimmauld Place. Lucius reports that Elladora hid her face at her husband's funeral, that her elder daughters were crying and that Bella held her mother's hand and was not. "She looked bored, the little devil." Lucius has to bite back a laugh.

Forty-six, things are going in your favor. A cloud of power and death has fallen over the wizarding society, and you walk the corridors of the Ministry of Magic, blood on your hands. In the distance, you hear the screams of panic from the guests invited there to celebrate the birth of a muggle child. In times like these, any fool would consider the possibility of an attack on the Ministry's Christmas party. But one should never underestimate other people's stupidity.

An Auror, an old friend of yours from school days, is foolish enough to get in your way that day. With a flick of your wand, you could make him vanish into white nothingness - but, as you find out, you don't have to do so. A curse shoots by you, maiming Alastor, robbing him of his leg and leaving you unharmed.

You turn around, not really knowing what to expect - and there stands your daughter. Four years have passed since you last saw her, but you know in an instant that it's her.

You linger, yet the time is short:

Flee for your life, gird up your strength

To flee; the shadows stretched at length

Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;

Flee to the mountain, tarry not.

Is this a time for smile and sigh,

For songs among the secret trees

Where sudden blue birds nest and sport?

The time is short and yet you stay:

Today while it is called today

Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;

Today is short, tomorrow nigh:

Why will you die? why will you die?

You're standing at the crossroads, and you know it. Everything could end here; a single curse and it would all be over: the brooding, the pride, the vulnerability, every little distraction from your goals that she has caused. Instead, you let her go. You even promise her that you will meet again. Soon, you say. She doesn't comment on that. You look after her, as she turns around and sweeps down the corridor, black Hogwarts school robes billowing after her, and you wonder what you're doing.

And in the evening - sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace in Tristan's library at Malfoy Manor - you throw the runes for her, for the first time.

Bliss. Discord. Yes, you think, that's her. Bela Black. The third one, however, is the double-edged sword. The Naga canon holds three meanings of this rune: crux, middle, indivisibility. Either path your daughter chooses in life, she'll walk it to the end. Her gift could take her either way, it's all there in the runes. Like a flipped coin, balanced on edge for a moment before falling to either heads or tails.

And you wonder absentmindedly what Dumbledore thought when he first saw her - Bellatrix Black who has her mother's eyes and her father's hands. What does your old Professor think of what he must have noticed by now: Bella's hands hold Salazar Slytherin's sword in his portrait in the eastern dungeons.

Your daughter also happens to be a genius. In her first lesson, she transfigured a match into a pin. On her first try. You know, because Elladora told you after Bella wrote home about this, excited. She's not too taken with her professor, it seems. "That woman hates me," she wrote shortly. "I don't know why, but she does." You exchanged a smile with Elladora at these words. So Minerva knows.

And does he? He is probably the most dangerous of all your adversaries, and he's working against you tirelessly. If he knew that the enemy's daughter attends his school, wouldn't he try to use it her against you? Pull her on his side? Why didn't he rise up to this challenge?

You, Tom Marvolo Riddle, know the answer to this question probably better than anyone else. Slytherins don't interest Albus Dumbledore. He likes being proven right. Every Slytherin that goes bad - male or female - inspires more of this smug self-righteousness you know only too well. But never mind. You accept it stoically. There's no chance in hell of you complaining, as long as he provides you with followers so assiduously. Through Bella's letters you've learned quite a lot about the young generation of Slytherins at Hogwarts. Lack of orientation sums it up very nicely. Dissatisfaction is another key word.

It's not like you to leave anything to chance. So far, however, you can't do much more than advise Elladora what extracurricular material to teach Bella and what not to. In your heart of hearts you know she'll raise your daughter to be everything you'll require from your own flesh and blood. Elladora has this strange intuition as to how prepare your daughter for the life she is destined to live. You can restrict yourself to keeping watch over her from afar.

Forty-eight, a young lady steps into your room at the Lestrange estate. It's a small chamber, but high-built and impressive, in a cathedral-like way, with the Gothic windows. You always thought that inside it was quieter than any other building you've ever known.

"Thank you," you hear her say, probably to Rodolphus who brought her to you, and in an instant you realize that you've never heard her voice before. "You may go," she adds when he won't leave. The door closes, and sitting in your armchair with your back to her, have to choke back a laugh. You keep quiet, sensing her presence in the room like a source of heat, and force yourself to concentrate on the parchments lying on the narrow table in front of you.

Thus, for quite a time nothing happens. The silence is so absolute, you can hear her breathing. You want to know what she is doing, but again you encounter that strange barrier that you already know from your father and your grandparents. It's impossible to read your ancestors or your descendants. Just when you start brooding about how you're supposed to teach her Legilimency under these circumstances, she appears by your side.

She kneels down next to you, eyes fixed on the table as well. You study the documents in silence for a while, and then you start adding explanations. Soon, the both of you are completely absorbed in Grimm's thoughts on Necromancy. She replies eventually, sharing her own ideas and mostly theoretical experiences. You're delighted by how easy this is, more than you want to admit to yourself. Having her by your side still feels a bit unreal. As if the protagonist of your favourite novel somehow had come to life.

You send her for a book from the shelf, but it's her free hand you grab when she returns. "Did you doubt me?" you ask. How you want to look down at her hand lying in yours, but you don't dare. She could notice that she has your hands.

"No, my Lord."

You know you have to choose between two truths. You cannot hide from her what everybody else knows - that you once were an orphaned half-blood growing up amongst muggles - that's why you can't endanger the other, better hidden truth. She has to stay Orion Black's daughter to the world and - most importantly - to herself. But you can give her something that he could or would not: you can be the father figure she craved for an eternity. You can do that - and if only for the reason that she desn't know that you are her father.

You don't have to spill it out - she knows what is offered to her, perhaps even comprehends that this is the moment she's been prepared for all her life by Elladora. Ancient knowledge, power beyond her wildest dreams. A life full of violence on a bed of stone. So you simply ask for her further plans after graduating from Hogwarts. It turns out that Elladora knows the area Bella considers her talents. The application form for the St. Mungo's Healer Programme is safely packed into her night-desk's drawer.

"And your mother?" you ask.

"What about her?"

Salazar, when was the last time somebody dared to ask back like that? "What does your mother think of this?" you inquire softly.

"She accepts it gracefully." Her thick, shining hair glides over her shoulders like a dark waterfall when she shrugs. "She doesn't know that I know that she knows."

"Of the Hippocratic oath, I meant." With a long finger you touch the letters in Grimm's book. "It might prove to be a hindrance when it comes to your initiation to the Dark Order."

Her heavy-lidded eyes are dark and enigmatic in the half-light of the room. "I'll have to get it over with before I take the oath, then."

I tell you what I dreamed last night:

It was not dark, it was not light,

Cold dews had clenched my plenteous hair

Thro' clay; you came to seek me there.

And "Do you dream of me?" you said,

My heart was dust that used to leap

To you; I answered half asleep:

"My pillow is damp, my sheets are red,

There's a leaden tester on my bed;

Find you a warmer playfellow,

A warmer pillow for your head,

A kinder love to love than mine."

From this day on - somewhen near the middle of her sixth year - you have a scholar. A curious idea, not only because you've never had one in your life, but also because you never would have imagined a sixteen-year-old witch would take that place. But then, where Elladora is concerned, a lot of things happened to you that you never would have imagined - and what other than aptitude for the Arts can a child of Bella's parentage show?

Yet her heritage is not the decisive factor. You know what you saw in her eyes when she came to your aid that day at the Ministry: delight in her power. Power to decide over doing good or evil, power to rule over life and death. The power a healer is given, that's what drives her to become one.

Your lessons are amazingly easy to organize. It seems that nothing has changed at Hogwarts since the days of old, and still nobody cares about how the Slytherins spend their free time. You don't fix a schedule, every other time you tell her where and when to meet you again. The Dark Arts are an exhausting subject to study, and joining the Dark Order is an arduous path. You make clear to Bella that the beginning is probably the hardest thing she's ever done - and the further she's come, the worse it gets.

She is an enthusiastic pupil; Elladora did well in giving her the foundation you can build on now. She is intelligent. Teaching her is a challenge. She is gifted. Sometimes when she starts a fierce attempt on some task you set her, you can feel her power humming in your bones. She is tireless. Her eyes show dark circles, but her Hogwarts grades don't suffer. You strongly suspect the abuse of pepper-up potion.

Soon, she does not only call on you for the practical part. You get used to her sitting in a corner of your room on the weekend and reading - reading on for hours without lifting her head from the dusty pages, before she leaves in the evening for some unavoidable social meeting at Grimmauld Place. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun, held in place by her wand of all things. Every once in a while she'll reach out for the construction and twirl her wand around in thought. One of these days, you promise her darkly, you'll catch her unconsciously muttering one of the spells she's reading about while doing that and...

You sound like her mother, you get in reply.

Eventually, she starts staying the night. When the spells you had her performing leave her to exhausted to do more than curl up on a makeshift bed, that's what she does. And sleeps restfully under her gaze like she used to do when she was a little girl. Completely accustomed. Completely safe. By sunrise, you let your eyes follow her from afar on her way back to the castle over the Hogwarts grounds, a cool, slender ghost in a black hood gliding over the dewy grass.

Forty-nine, for the first time ever, somebody manages to break your Imperius. You don't know what to make of that. Is it easier, you ponder when you help her sit down after that somewhat shocking encounter, to throw off a curse your own parent cast on you? Or is it just Bella... and her being that powerful?

Ella, you think, you've given me the greatest gift. I'm glad you talked me into having her.

Shortly before graduation, you start to send her on missions more important than spying on her fellow students. Lucius and Antonin think highly of her and her affinity to the Unforgivables. She never fails you. And you give in return whatever her heart desires. She'll have it, even if it means that there is no peace of mind for her, no rest and no friends helping hand.

No love life. You watch her do the right thing, get engaged to a suitable man and deny her one true love. Yes, she falls in love at one time. And you know what they say: a man can trick himself into believing that he is still young - until the day he realizes that his children have reached the age to fall in love. Or perhaps this love has been there all her life. It doesn't even matter.

Disgrace she calls her feelings - a term you have no doubt the young blood-traitor uses as well to describe his. You only have to take one look into his eyes to understand why your daughter's heart chose him. He is her equal. He has her dragon-fire heart and quicksilver mind, yet he is Gryffindor to the core, and everyone knows opposites attract. She leaves this part of her life behind without you even pointing out the necessity. A measure of self-protection.

Fifty-one, you take her to see the Grey Fortress and the fate that awaits her if you are betrayed. Side-by-side, master and scholar, you wander the corridors that house the living dead. Your cloak wrapped around the two of you, you watch the silent horror creep into her mind, body and soul. Her hand still on yours for support, she takes a step away from you, holding her head up high, refusing to let herself be swallowed by her fears. With her back turned to you, she sinks down on her knees and wraps her long white fingers around her arm like touching an imagined Dark Mark.

"Master," you hear her say softly. "You're still with me."

Of course you are. Not even in this place does she lose her thought of you, for by now, you are linked to many of her worst memories. On your way back from Azkaban, she tells you about the commission St. Mungo's is forming to examine to effects of Cruciatus on the human brain. They've asked her to join it, a great honour for a young healer who is still in her education. You smile at each other.

That evening you sit in the window arch of the small castle ruin near Malfoy Manor, facing each other, her naked arm lying in your lap. The colours of sunset cast her features into a haze of pastel and gold that makes her resemble the painting of a nun that hung over one of the doors at the orphanage. The black, wavy hair that frames her face like a veil adds to the image. More than ever before you want to know what she's thinking. Searching for hints in her almost otherworldly still face, you nearly miss the obvious.

She is thinking of her mother, you can take it for granted. When she takes the Mark she says her final yes to everything Elladora stands for: to pureblood nobility and rank, to fortune and ancient lineage, but also to a lifestyle of persecution. Her gaze doesn't waver when she looks up to meet your eyes, and only then you lay your fingertip on the ivory skin of her inner arm and initiate the binding spell.

Fifty-two, one of your young followers becomes your son-in-law. Bella's two years of waiting have finally come to an end. Rodolphus returns from France and enters your Inner Circle. After getting married, Bella leaves Grimmauld Place, but not the hospital. You argue a lot about that point - in your opinion, the delicious irony of being the one who causes the injuries she is supposed to heal, doesn't outweigh the risk of being caught. But she won't be talked out of it.

The Prophet writes most highly of her. "It is the tireless effort of selfless wizards and witches like Bellatrix Black Lestrange that keeps society from sinking into despair in times like these," she quotes haughtily. She enjoys the admiration of the crowd, being naturally invited to every Ministry banquet and considered a pillar os society - all the while providing St. Mungo's Department for Spell Damage with patients and corrupting her loved one's little brother.

You, the one person who gets to look at the whole picture that is Bellatrix Lestrange, like what you see.

For all night long I dreamed of you:

I woke and prayed against my will,

Then slept to dream of you again.

At length I rose and knelt and prayed:

I cannot write the words I said,

My words were slow, my tears were few;

But thro' the dark my silence spoke

Like thunder. When this morning broke,

My face was pinched, my hair was grey,

And frozen blood was on the sill

Where stifling in my struggle I lay.

You're fifty-three, when the Prewetts make the last of their many mistakes. The famous Aurors take on your daughter's family, and for the first time since Grindelwald days, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black gets into the Ministry's crossfire.

Elladora is as prepared as one can be when Gideon and Fabian Prewett come to her house to arrest her because of the financial support she gave to the cause. She does not resist when she's dragged before the Wizengamot for the second time in her life, knowing already that this time it's going to be a lifetime sentence in Azkaban. They have not counted, however, on her last weapon: her defiance. Elladora falls ill in the Grey Fortress, only hours after her imprisonment. Sick on purpose, stubborn to death, and there's nothing her guardians can do to prevent her from wasting away.

Unfortunately, there's noothing you and Bella can do either, when you break into the fortress that night to steal her away. The instant you touch her, you know that you can only bring her home to die. So that's what you do. You bring her to Little Hangleton.

"Why did you do that?" You're waiting for Bella to return with her sister. You give Elladora your own cloak, as the flames of the small fireplace in your grandparents' living room cannot warm her. For a moment, you imagine your father going after her mother and bringing the two of you back here, just in time. Did you do so much better?

"I've lived a full life, Tom," Elladora says. "And it's mine to give away when I'm ready to."

"But... now..." You can't remember the last time you stammered.

"It's over." Her feverish eyes narrow. "I've lived everything. My name will grace the annals of the Dark Order when Barty Crouch and Millicent Bagnold have been dust for the longest time. That's my immortality, Tom. I don't have the right to want more." She reaches for you with a trembling hand and raises your hand to her lips.

The girls enter the room, and everything else is left unsaid. Morning light already seeps into the room, pale and silvery, when Elladora dies. You leave Bella and Narcissa alone with her mother. And with a cold, quiet voice you order Dolohov to go to the Prewetts' house.

Elladora is buried at Malfoy Manor, since she so loved the grounds. Hers is an absurdly early age for a witch of her powers to die a natural death, and she was officially a refugee from the law during the last hours of her life, so the mourners are few. You stand at Bella's side and she wears her mother's cameo.

Only days after, the cold rush of real fear makes you start in the middle of the night. The Mark creates a connection between you and every one of your followers. It's this bond that tells you that your daughter is in pain, and seriously so.

No one as much as raises an eyebrow when you step into the Lestranges' bedroom at three o'clock in the morning. The bed is soaked with blood on Bella's side, which gives hints at what happened, although you can hardly believe that she managed to hide her condition from you. You call her name, hand resting on her forehead. Her fever is high already, but this is nothing you can't handle. You don't ask for her husband's permission, when you cradle her in your arms to carry her away.

Why didn't she tell you? Was she afraid you might tell her to get rid of the child? And would you have done so? She sleeps a lot in the days to come, exhausted. The injury is critical and the loss she suffers leaves her weak and powerless, but she grows stronger evetually. She feeds off your presence, and you won't abandon her. You get closer to each other than ever before. By saving her life, you really become her Lord, her master, her father.

Her all.

Her fingertips on your cheek are cool and dry. And people think Dumbledore is the only one you ever feared.

Your relationship changes afterwards. She has seen daeth. And she knows whose powers brought her back. You prefer not to dwell on the question whether or not she used to fully believe in your ability to conquer death. She does now, that is for certain.

Merely months ago, you would have hesitated to order Bella to murder a family member. Now, she doesn't as much as bat an eyelid before she walks out into the night to kill Regulus Black.

She knows of her cousin's weakness, the decision whether treachery actually occurred she leaves to you. You never could teach her Legilimency for reasons you cannot let her know. She has to lean on her intuition in such matters - and on your judgement. For a daughter of yours she is surprisingly inept at reading other people's minds. Almost a Black trait, you'd think, if it weren't impossible. They are famous for their lack of skill in such matters. But to be fair - your never had her intuition either. It might be something she has inherited from her mother, who knows.

"Shouldn't I come along?" she asks, leaning in the doorway that Halloween night. You shake your head. This is something you have to handle alone. You turn to leave when your realize that she is still looking at you, oddly quiet.

"What is it?" you ask a bit impatiently, catching her face in the palm of your hand.

"Nothing," she says with a false voice. The words and her eyes will haunt you for thirteen years.

"I just can't stop shivering."

You hear from Wormtail what happened later on. The Ministry came after Sirius Black's family and had them all arrested for various amounts of time. But she talked her way out of this, of course. She is a Slytherin, in far more than just name. They say it is the house of the cunning and ambitious. Slytherins say it is the house of the strong-willed. Slytherins rather fall down than giving in or giving up.

And if your daughter and her husband and brother-in-law return obediently and without a complaint to their daily work at Gringotts and St. Mungo's after their imprisonment in Azkaban for almost a month, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement better had been warned. That is something you would have loved to see: Dumbledore's face when he sat court over already the third generation of Riddle women. The Longbottoms under the curse they used to perform on the law-breakers so carelessly. Bella and her loved one sharing the penalty for their unwavering loyalty to two very different masters.

If now you saw me you would say:

Where is the face I used to love?

And I would answer: Gone before;

It tarries veiled in paradise.

When once the morning star shall rise,

And earth with shadow flees away

And we stand safe within the door,

Then you shall lift the veil thereof.

Look up, rise up: for far above

Our palms are grown, our place is set;

There we shall meet as once we met

And love with old, familiar love.

After the summer of your return, you often stand on the balconies of Malfoy Manor, looking northwards. She'll know by now that you're back, they all will. The walls of Azkaban cannot break the connection between the Dark Lord and his faithful ones. Leaves fall; snow follows, as autumn turns to winter.

Even if you can't see them, you can ascertain the moment when Lucius brings her inside. Like after that Quidditch match in her second year when she got hit by a bludger and he had to carry her off the field. His memory, not hers - after all this time and in her current state of mind she's still unreadable to you. You might despair over this thought if you were not in ecstatics.

By dawn, you enter her room. She is lying on her back, as Lucius set her there, her hair a dark flood over the pillow. "My child," you say without realising that you're speaking aloud. "My child I'm so proud of." Her eyes are moving under her lids. You quickly bury your hand in her hair and leave the room. She is home now; her life can be as it was. All she must do is awaken.

She will turn to her side, bed her cheek on her hands. She'll sense your presence, remember your voice and the feel of your hand in her hair. She'll open her eyes, but you won't be there. Of course it was a dream, she'll think, it was too good to be true, and hold her eyes closed for a little longer to banish the dementors. But her skin will feel warm and her fiercely closed eyes' vision will be red from the light that floods the room.

And it will only be then that she realizes that good dreams don't belong in Azkaban and that something exceptional is happening.